Chapter 4
CHAPTER FOUR
No sooner had he uttered the words than the call of the female’s whooshing blood overtook me. The ache in my mouth had grown so strong, painfully so, and the pulse thrumming in the female’s neck felt like an irresistible throb beckoning me closer.
In a burst of speed, the realm blurred, and then my arms were around her, and she was fighting me in terror. An instinct reared up inside me that I neither understood nor could ignore, but my mind buzzed, and I answered its enthralling allure. Power grew in my eyes and my voice.
“Be still.” The compulsion left my lips as my pupils fixed on hers, dilating as foreign vampiric magic oozed out of me.
The female fell slack in my arms. I angled her neck and sank my needle-like fangs into her, puncturing her thin skin so easily.
Blood instantly flooded my mouth, and the metallic taste was positively decadent.
I moaned against her, and a part of me became aware of what I was doing.
Internally, I recoiled, yet the taste of her blood, the beat of her heart . . . all of it entranced me.
I cradled her closer, drinking and drinking. Her blood poured down my throat, flooded my belly, and its taste had my eyes rolling back in my head in rapture as the divine nectar nourished me.
I sucked more, and the more blood I drank, the more I wanted it, needed it, burned for it.
A throb began in my lower belly, and arousal rose within me with a vengeance.
Drink, lick, suck, fuck. The urge to touch her, fuck her, consume her, had my head jolting back with such vigor that her throat tore, and blood surged from her neck.
But I stayed back, my entire body locking up. “What’s happening?” I whispered. Instincts blazed inside me. Foreign feelings. Awful desires.
I lurched back more, dropping the female, and she fell unconscious to the floor with a heavy thump. Horror filled me as her skin paled even more.
“Gods and Goddesses, what have I done? Did I kill her?” My hands shook, and I wanted to help her, but I didn’t trust myself to move because that burning need inside me still flamed. I wanted to drink more, more, more.
I held myself rigid, not moving a muscle.
Arms crossed, my uncle frowned. “I’ve read that vampires who aren’t careful can easily drain their meals dry.” He tsked and stepped closer to the girl, then extracted a vial from his pocket.
I lunged backward, terror slicing through me at the sight of that small glass bottle, but my uncle merely opened it and poured its contents directly over the female’s open throat.
The potion fizzled on her skin, and her blood vessels closed as the skin slowly began to knit itself back together. With a start, I realized the vial’s contents were an advanced healing potion and not another nefarious concoction derived from the God of Night.
My shoulders sagged. “Thank the Gods. She almost—”
But I couldn’t bring myself to say it.
“Died?” My uncle arched an eyebrow and recorked the vial.
He tucked it back into his pocket. “Yes, she would have, but you could have saved her. Your saliva now carries venom. Your venom can be used for several things. It can heal your victim’s puncture wounds, but it can also turn others.
If done correctly, after you bite a fairy, you can inject your venom into a fairy’s bloodstream rather than drinking from them.
Doing so will turn them into a vampire, but you’re never to turn anyone. Understood, Primelle?”
His command took root, and I automatically replied, “Yes, uncle.” Just as fast, I recalled what Nathaniel had told me of vampires and of what Kole and Gwen had warned me of all those weeks ago when I’d burst into my uncle’s chambers with the Stone.
“It’s not safe anymore to be near him, Prim. They’re saying it’s advanced enough that he can infect us.”
This was what they’d all been talking about.
The Imperial Council had feared that Timith would be able to infect others.
Nathaniel’s Ironcrest colleague had alluded to the same thing.
And they’d been right. In the end, Timith’s condition had grown advanced enough that he carried the venom needed to turn other fae into vampires. And he’d once tried to bite Gwen.
And now I had the ability to do what everyone had feared.
“But as for feeding,” my uncle continued, none the wiser to what I’d just realized, “if you extract your fangs more carefully next time, then lick where your fangs cut into your victim, it should stop the bleeding and heal the puncture wounds. And as long as you compel your meals before you drink, as you did to this female, they’ll stay docile and won’t remember the incident or be aware that anything amiss ever occurred. ”
The potion’s magic finally closed the female’s throat completely. Once it entirely fizzled away, only faint scars of two puncture wounds remained.
My uncle pointed at her scars. “Unlike potions, your venom will leave their skin flawless. Scars won’t remain if you use your venom to heal them. It’s imperative that you do this so as not to leave evidence.”
Once again, his command reared up inside me, and my response flowed from my lips as though spoken from a foreign entity. “Yes, Uncle.”
Fingers shaking, I wiped at my mouth. A few blood droplets came away from it, and the urge to greedily lick them off my fingers had me dipping my fingertips into my mouth.
Disgust at what I was doing and what I’d done washed through me, yet the blood tasted addictive, and a pleasantly full feeling in my belly had my fangs retracting and the ache in my gums abating.
That sensation only made self-hatred roil through me. However, my uncle wasn’t fazed in the slightest, his matter-of-fact persona continuing.
“When you feed back in Whiteolf, you must stop yourself before their hearts fade and then heal your victim’s wounds so they don’t die. It’s important that you don’t draw attention to yourself or that of the authorities. Understood, Primelle?”
“Yes, Uncle.”
He gave me a sympathetic smile. “And don’t be alarmed if you have new .
. . urges. Vampires are very sexual by nature.
You may want to fuck your victims while you’re drinking from them.
This is allowed as long as no one catches you in the act.
But again, you must compel them beforehand so they have no memories of any of it. Understood?”
My eyes widened, and it hit me that what I’d just felt for the female had been exactly that. I’d wanted to ravish this innocent girl, yet I’d never had those types of urges toward females before. My uncle was giving me free permission to take that from my victims too, even though it would be rape.
Revulsion wafted through me, and my thoughts shifted to Kole, of what he would feel if I engaged in such acts with another fairy, male or female.
“Oh Gods.” The whispered statement left my lips in a tortured swell of pain. Despair twisted my heart so sharply, and I fought the compulsion, fought the urge to please my uncle. I did not want to hurt my mate or rape an innocent, even though it was likely I would eventually do both.
I squeezed my eyes tightly shut. Don’t respond to him. Don’t respond. Fight the urge to submit to him.
All of my muscles tensed as that waffling need to please my uncle rose higher and higher. I battled the instinct, but the need to accommodate him and do whatever he wanted had words forming on my tongue despite trying to hold them back.
“Yes . . . Uncle,” I said through gritted teeth.
He smirked. “Try and fight me all you want, Primelle, but it’s useless.
I am your Maker. I own you now.” He nudged the female with his foot.
“Enter her mind and erase all memories of what she saw and felt tonight, including when I contacted her. And if anyone asks her about the scars on her neck, make her believe that she had an accident in the kitchen with a fork.”
“A fork?” I scoffed. Nobody in the realm would ever stab themselves accidentally in the throat with a fork.
His eyes darkened. “If you enter her mind, she’ll believe it to be true, and her sincerity will trick others. Now, do as I say.”
I peeled my lips back, and a snarl rose inside me, but his command took root, and seconds later, the female’s memories were wiped clean as she continued sleeping, none the wiser that I’d just violated her.
Revulsion grew in me anew. I’d become a monster. A dark creature. A scourge to our realm.
It didn’t matter that I didn’t want any of this or that I still looked mostly as I had before. I swung toward my uncle and wished so desperately that I could tear his throat out, but the instant the thought came to me, my body seized. I couldn’t move.
His eyebrows rose, and I could only imagine what expression I wore, but when I didn’t move further, he smirked and then tsked again.
“Vampire magic has many useful attributes. You may find the enhanced strength, healing, and senses to your liking. However, there is one aspect of its magic that I know you abhor, but there’s nothing you can do about it.
” A sly smile lifted his lips, and he faced me fully.
“Makers are gods in the vampire realm, Primelle. You can no sooner kill me than this unconscious female can. So try all you like, but it won’t change a thing. ”
I fisted my hands and bit back a scream. I wanted to howl, rail, fight . . . but I couldn’t. Magic held me in place. Frozen. Rigid. Obedient.
He was right. I couldn’t have fought him or hurt him if my life depended on it. Although I didn’t have a life anymore. I was a walking corpse.
Furious, I stomped my foot, then nodded angrily toward the female. “Who is she?”
“One of my kitchen staff. She works here on the weekends, but I called her in early.”
I tried again to fight. To hurt him. To end him for what he was doing.
But I was as frozen and as still as ice.